Planning a PC, Odyssey framerates

[Felix DiCestria]

As I understand it the framerates in Odyssey can tank if you're looking at a settlement/CZ.
This seems to be associated with high CPU usage.
This actually sounds familiar as X3 Terran Conflict had a similar issue with 'booze-n-weed megaplexes' apparently due to the number of polygons being calculated.
Various work arounds came out including stacking factories inside each other and modding the connectors out.

This makes me think that old-skool CPU clockspeed and Ram may have more effect than a chunky graphics card. It also brings up the question of threading and the ability of the game to use multiple cores; (X3 was single threaded so multiple cores went unused)

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

I would love to be corrected on this.. but in my specific experience, what causes the most dismay about the framerate is not what you're able to mix max on your specific machine, but the overall erosion of fps over time. Just keep playing it, and as you complete the loops of gameplay, the fps just degrades with every contact with odyssey content.

I guess you could brute force this to always be above whatever your minimum expectation is.. but it really isn't you its them. Or it may the case that some config of settings will work for your current hardware, its only the actually playing the game -> lower fps thats making you feel like you need to upgrade, which is rubbish.

Also with the cpu, when i've been watching it, i've got 16 threads on my cpu, and only one of them really active and asking for as much burst as possible. If you really are okay with buying hardware just for an interim / mid development version of the game, just go for the highest cpu clocks available?

 

[the100thmonkey]

Ground conflict zones are CPU-limited by the pathfinding and navigation scripts used by the NPCs.

Other areas are GPU-limited by the massively inefficient methods used to render the scene.

The faster your CPU, RAM and GPU the better, obviously, but there are limits to how much anyone should he forced to spend to get playable framerates. A 5800X, DDR4-3200 CL16 and 3060Ti will hold a solid 60fps in most scenes at 1080p. The two together cost me £900. Upgrading the RAM to 3600MT/s would Garner between 5-10% better framerates at the same latency, something you could probably achieve with tightened timings at 3200MT/s.

It fit my upgrade cycle to buy; I wouldn't go upgrading solely for this game as the engine's limitations make it just not worth it unless the game is unplayable on your current rig.

 

[wrr377]

Last I heard, even the best PCs could struggle with consistent frame rates, and budget builds could do fine, then on other PCs, not the case - there is no consistent hardware build for good frame rates...

As the previous poster indicated, buying the highest of everything MIGHT allow you to brute-force your way through the bad performance issues seen on lesser machines, but it isn't guaranteed... Also, AMD runs hot AF!

Meanwhile, I've got an old i7-4790 (recently cheaply upgraded from an i5-4570), 24GB DDR3, GTX 1070 8GB, 1TB SSD, and the base game (+Horizons) plays smooth as glass for me.

 

[Felix DiCestria]

As the poster indicated there's 2 principal issues.
1) High single threaded CPU load; explaining why older/cheaper rigs tend to do better due to higher base clock speed.
2) Shader load, which can be dealt with using lower resolution.
As console Cmdr looking to set up a new PC this actually lowers the entry threshold whilst established PC types would have an issue.

 

[Deleted member 182079]

I recommend you building/buying a balanced PC within your budget with a view to play other games at certain settings/performance and then just deal with the performance you'll get in Odyssey. This DLC is still quite broken in several areas and is therefore completely unsuitable to dictate any purchasing decisions, plus its visuals even when they work are far from impressive in 2022.

I'm on a 2060S with an i7 9700, and can get a stable 60fps in settlements at max settings/1440p - as long as no NPCs are present. But it can chug down to 30ish and horrible jank when they are. Strangely enough my GPU usage was maxed out while CPU was at around 60% (while what was rendered on screen was a aliasing ridden mess). It seems very random still and I stopped worrying about it too much as there's nothing I can do about it - that ball is well and truly in FDev's court.

I can run visual feasts like CP2077, RDR2, MSFS and Forza Horizon 5 no problem at high or even max settings, and without any jank at all - those are the kind of games that should be used as hardware benchmarks (the modern versions of "can I run Crysis?" basically). Odyssey is still the only game that my PC struggles with, even though it's gotten a bit better since patch 9. And without knowing about the long term prospects of Elite in general, I'd be very wary to invest too much into it at this point in time anyways.

 

[Bob McBobblehead]

Not used the on-foot features for ages, but was struggling to keep 1080p@60fps at settlements using a Ryzen 5950x, RX 5700XT and 32GB of ram.